Rust

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The core features of rust are:

  • Performance
  • Reliability
  • Productivity

Learning resources

As always, I will leave here my 2 cents in the crazy big book called the world wild web.

really good cheatsheets

How do I learn rust?

I saw the entire playlist of No Boilerplate, just get my feet warm and then with codewars, start to resolve simple katas and learn as I go.

If you are curious about my advance. Here is the repository on github.

tips and tricks in rust

  • You need to write code that won’t be used in a short time and don’t like to recieve warnings? write this at the top of your program:
#![allow(unused)]
  • There is a macro to sign work in progress in your code, without breaking the complier (like a pass equivalent from Python).
todo!()

source: Let’s get rusty - Prototyping in Rust with the todo!() macro

  • You can have an Enum with an implementation for just one (or some) of the types. You’ll have to use traits and impl on your enum.

    source (and explanation): StackOverflow

  • you can include a static string from a file with include_string!("file.txt")

    source: rust std docs

Inline hints

You can enable and disable suggestions and inline hints in VS Code.

source:Toggle your Rust Analyzer Inlay Hints

Databases

As a sumup table, I have found these packages of interest

packagetypeasyncconnection pool
rusqlitedriver❌❌
redisdriver❌❌
mongodbdriver❌❌
mysql_commondriver❌❌
mysql_asyncdriver✅❌
scylladriver❌❌
postgresdriver❌❌
sleddriver✅❌
sqlxdriver✅✅
dieselORM❌❌
sea-ormORM✅✅
sea-queryquery builder✅❌
r2d2connection pool✅✅

testing

If you want to feel confident of your product, you need to test it.

  • Jorge does a great job at explaining testing in rust. Also gives a couple of good tips for advanced users!
  • next-test is a better cargo test than the default. Try it and see what it looks like.
  • add coverage with cargo grcov.

cargo section

Cargo is the package manager and a lot more in rust. Here is a tldr on how to use it

cargo build           # to build the project
cargo run             # to run the project. It builds it if it's not built yet
cargo check           # is a great form to call the compiler to check your code
cargo build --release # to build the project with a lot of optimizations

How rustup manages versions and what is a toolchain

As I read this rustup book, it explains a couple of things about rustup

  • it can manage rust channels (versions of rust) like stable or beta or nightly. (Same as NodeJS nvm or Python pyenv)
  • you can add or specify targets (architectures) like linux-64x, mac, windows, etc.
  • components are like tools that rustup installs. Here are cargo, rust-analyzer, clippy and so on.

linters

clippy is your friend

clippy is a linter to catch common errors and mistakes in rust (kinda like flake8 in python).

You can enable categories or enable simple lints to check your code. See the complete list of lints here

TODO:
I'd be nice if I can make 2 configs of clippy:
- one for general fixing, looking for broad fixes
- and one for detailing and setup for production (delete all errors allowance, skips, etc)

bacon crate is just amazing

bacon crate is a hot-reload checker for rust with incredible defaults. If you want hot-reload, try bacon first, and then cargo-watch.

source: No Boilerplate - Build your lightsaber

Rust hot-reload is available with the crate cargo-watch

You have to install it! Install cargo-watch with

cargo install cargo-watch

and watch your changes on your rust code with:

cargo watch --exec run

to have simply hot reload, and if you want the quieter version:

cargo watch --quiet --clear --exec 'run --quiet'
bonus tip

If you are currently in a parent folder with many sub projects, you can run a folder like this:

parent/
|-sub_project/
| |-hello.rs
|-sub_project2/
  |-other_file.rs
cargo watch --quiet --clear --exec 'run --quiet --subproject hello'

source: Jeremy Chrone - Quiet hot reload with cargo watch -q

To check your dependencies, you can use cargo-outdated

If you see the readme of cargo-outdated you can see this when you run

cargo outdated

Name             Project  Compat  Latest   Kind         Platform
----             -------  ------  ------   ----         --------
clap             2.20.0   2.20.5  2.26.0   Normal       ---
clap->bitflags   0.7.0    ---     0.9.1    Normal       ---
clap->libc       0.2.18   0.2.29  Removed  Normal       ---
clap->term_size  0.2.1    0.2.3   0.3.0    Normal       ---
clap->vec_map    0.6.0    ---     0.8.0    Normal       ---
num_cpus         1.6.0    ---     1.6.2    Development  ---
num_cpus->libc   0.2.18   0.2.29  0.2.29   Normal       ---
pkg-config       0.3.8    0.3.9   0.3.9    Build        ---
term             0.4.5    ---     0.4.6    Normal       ---
term_size->libc  0.2.18   0.2.29  0.2.29   Normal       cfg(not(target_os = "windows"))

Which is nice to have.

do you want to sync the docstring with the README.md of the project?

Try cargo-readme

Look it working here

problems I came across at some point

If you see this problem while compiling a new library on the terminal:

error occurred: Failed to find tool. Is `gcc.exe` installed? (see https://github.com/alexcrichton/cc-rs#compile-time-requirements for help)

The best guide out there is a StackOverflow answer here

some language features

This post comes from github, view it here